


To Be Continued

by dawnstruck



Series: tbc [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bromance, Fix-It, Friendship, M/M, Pre-Slash, Reichenbach Fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 23:45:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"John knows something is off when he opens the door and there is a shadow on the floor where there is supposed to be none."<br/>An unexpected encounter opens John's eyes.<br/>Reichenbach Fix-It</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Continued

**To Be Continued**

John knows something is off when he opens the door and there is a shadow on the floor where there is supposed to be none.

Maybe it’s a bit paranoid, but he knows this flat and he knows when something has been changed in this flat and maybe it’s the lingering influence a certain consulting detective still has on his life, but considering the amount and angle of early afternoon sun that streams in through the window looking out at the street, not to mention how the old armchair is situated and shaped, John can tell with 92% certainty that there is someone sitting in that armchair.

It’s not Mrs. Hudson, that’s for sure; he met her on her way out just when he came in, and while he is still in fairly regular contact with him the older Holmes has only ever come directly to 221b for his brother’s sake, preferring to kidnap John in a roundabout way.

Without any staged drugs busts the Met has no reason to show up unannounced and if there was something the matter Greg would just call him instead of mysteriously appearing in his home.

So that leaves only one plausible solution and John prepares himself for the inevitable confrontation, taking a deep steady breath. Carefully he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the trusted army knife, flipping it open silently.

It’s only a flimsy means of defense. If there is really a trained assassin waiting for him in his living room, then they have already heard him enter, have heard him pause, have heard him breathe. He half expects a bullet to hit the space between his eyes the moment he takes another step forward.

There is no bullet. There is no assassin.

But there is a woman sitting in his favourite armchair, her denim-clad legs elegantly crossed, her thin wrists casually resting on the armrests in a half-rejecting, half-welcoming manner.

“It’s so tidy here,” Irene Adler says in her smoky-smooth voice, her dove blue gaze lazily slipping over the littered floor.

She’s not being sarcastic; John knows what she means. The flat is cluttered with the typical mess of an uncaring bachelor, of a man who’s given up _something_ – not the brilliant chaos of a semi-mad genius.

There are plates with half-eaten toast standing around, stacks of weeks-old newspapers on the floor, a pile of bills and advertisements and envelopes on the coffee table. He’s conducting an experiment in the kitchen, too, just for old times’ sake, nothing major, only some blood samples, mostly his, but some from Mrs. Hudson and Greg and even Harry, too. He couldn’t bring himself to give away the equipment like it had been originally planned. He stood in front of the boxes, ready to tape them shut, and then he’d just taken out the set of test-tubes that had been a Christmas present from one of his former girlfriends (Jenny… no, Jeanette). It had been kept, not out of gratitude or even sentiment, but because the old set happened to have melted just a few days prior. A useful present. No one rejected a useful present.

So after the funeral John had kept it, all of it. Not because it was useful, no, he had no reason to stick syringes into his arm and fill vial after vial with bright red fluid. He did keep it out of sentiment. There were so many memories linked to the petri dishes, to the bullet holes in the wall, to every single scratch on the floor.

“He’s gone,” Irene Adler says, sounding slightly surprised as that realization dawns to her, and only now does she lift her head, looking for explanations on his drawn face.

John only nods curtly, ignoring the twinge in his leg.

“For almost a year now,” he adds and thinks of the anniversary in three weeks. He blearily remembers Mrs. Hudson baking a cake exactly twelve months after he had moved into 221B. Even Sherlock had eaten a big slice, even though he claimed that the frosting was too sweet and too pink. John had secretly agreed on both accounts, but it had still been a wonderful day and only later did he realize that maybe Mrs. Hudson had chosen that color as homage to _A Study in Pink._ Sherlock had surely noted it right away and silently let his ego be stroked by that indirect praise.

John swallows thickly. At least he doesn’t flinch anymore whenever he thinks of Sherlock, whenever someone mentions his name.

“Why is he gone?” Irene Adler wants to know, “Where?”

John shakes his head, thinks better of it and shrugs.

“Why are _you_ here?” he asks instead. What he means is ‘Why are you _alive_?’ but that should be fairly obvious.

It must be close to one and a half year since she has been declared dead. Then again he had gotten that info between the two Holmes brothers, so he probably shouldn’t have been surprised. A lot of people seemed to think that he was better off not knowing stuff in general.

Tiredly he pinches the base of his nose, clenching his eyes shut.

“So I take you were not beheaded then?” he asks lightly. She looks different, but her pretty head is still seated firmly on her slim neck and narrow shoulders.

She offers him one of those wicked smiles that would appear polite to anyone else. But he drinks tea with Mycroft Holmes once a month. He’s not easily fooled.

Maybe she can read his thoughts on his face and by now he is so used to getting that from so many people that he isn’t even caught off guard.

“Not even Mycroft Holmes can reach every distant corner of all deserts in the world,” she chuckles and John cocks an eyebrow.

“But I assume someone can, considering that you are here,” he points out and just like that her face is wiped clean and there is some honest astonishment in her expression.

“Oh,” she says pleasantly, “I can see why he likes you.”

He is too much reminded of their conversation in an empty building to be put off by her still using present tense.

There is nothing to like anymore and no one who does.

“So he didn’t tell you,” she muses then, tilting her head to the side as if contemplating the painting of an expressionist, pretty enough but difficult to interpret. And John knows what she’s going to tell him before she does.  
“He saved me,” she exhales, leaning back a bit and tilting her chin up to stare at the ceiling, “Believe me, I was prepared to die there, but he saved me.”

John ignores the lump in his throat.

“Good for you,” he says and then turns around to make himself some tea.

“He probably hasn’t told you because he’s afraid his brother will find out after all,” Irene tells his tense shoulders, “I reckon I still have a bounty on my head.”

“And now you turn up here?” John forces his voice to remain steady, “Not a very smart move. This house is being constantly watched.”

“Don’t worry,” he can almost hear her casual shrug, “Sherlock can erase all traces for me.”

John wants to scratch her eyes out for saying that name in such a careless manner.

“I doubt it,” he answers, calmly pouring hot water into his cup, “Been told the internet connection is a bit wonky in hell.”

Not that he believes that Sherlock is in hell. Sherlock deserves so much more, but heaven is dull. He’s be bored to death in paradise. Bored to death. Heh. Bad joke. No, Sherlock doesn’t belong into hell, but at least he’d have something to do there, like in Greek mythology, maybe figure out a way to roll Sisyphus’s rock up the hill and actually get it to stay there. Yeah, he’d like that.

Irene is silent while John watches his tea steep.

“What do you mean with that?” she demands finally, “Why hell?”

“Obvious, isn’t it?” he gets a bit of pleasure whenever he can point out to someone that something is obvious; he only wishes he wouldn’t have to because he used to have Sherlock for that, “He’s dead.”

Again Irene is baffled into silence.

“That,” she amends and shifts a bit on the worn cushions, “Is a bit of a surprise.”

“I take it you didn’t have much contact to the web either, wherever you’ve been this whole time?” he wonders, pulls out the damp teabag, takes up the cup and wanders back into the living area. He’s still wearing his jacket, but he needs it both for protection and warmth; he’s afraid of being vulnerable, of shivering in her presence.

But when he sits down on the couch, balancing the warm cup between his palms and taking the first tentative sip, he notices for the first time how much Irene Adler has really changed.

She’s got her eyes fixed on his cup, acutely aware that he didn’t offer her any tea, but not commenting on it. She doesn’t look much like The Woman anymore. In fact if she had walked past him on the street John probably wouldn’t even have recognized her.

Her hair is cropped short, safe for the stylishly long fringe that wisps over her forehead and half-obscures her left eye, the color a warm shade of hazelnut brown, a few strands bleached by the sun, unlike her skin that has adapted a smooth dark tone that can’t be naturally acquired anywhere in England. Her face is painted in nude tones, a bit too pale to fit the rest of her skin, and maybe there are quite a few more wrinkles around her mouth, around her eyes than what he remembers. She’s still pretty, but she appears… subdued.

It’s got nothing to do with the fact that she didn’t greet him in her birthday suit this time, but is actually wearing jeans and a tank-top with a grey cardigan, her coat folded neatly over her handbag on the floor, directly next to her high-heeled half-boots.

John thinks about how she had almost been beheaded, that she had been _prepared to die_ , and he wonders what has happened during her long absence and whether he even wants to know.

But Sherlock managed to save this woman, The Woman, and he didn’t manage to save himself from some idiocy that forced him to jump down a bloody skyscraper and it’s not fucking fair.

He sits on the couch and continues to drink his tea, waiting for Irene Adler to speak or leave or throw herself out the window, he doesn’t really care.

“I’ve been… away,” she begins carefully after a few more moments, “Got a bit caught up in Somalia and then Chile. After he helped me get away, of course.”

She gives a short, brittle laugh, but her breath hitches a little when she says Somalia. John doesn’t say anything.

“At first I kept track on him. On both of you, really,” a half-hearted grin, “Where one goes, the other follows.”

John’s tongue feel like it’s made of sandpaper; his face remains unchanged.

“I read your blog,” she adds with a slightly amused huff, “I liked the one with the racehorse. What was it called?

Silver Blaze? I can just imagine how he must’ve looked when it started chewing on his scarf. Too bad you didn’t take a picture.”

John _had_ taken a picture, but he kept it safe where no one would find it because it was private and it was his and Sherlock’s pout had been directed at him and nobody else.

“But as I said, I got caught up,” Irene says and her left shoulder makes a flippant, yet uncertain motion, “Though I can’t deny that I was quite pleased when he contacted me all of a sudden. Just for information, he claimed, but still. A girl can dream, right?”

The expression on her face is wistful and John is reminded of how she had stared up at Sherlock in utter adoration, not quite sexual tension simmering between them, and how she spoke of mercy and begging, yet betraying him within the blink of an eye.

“I had hoped to find him here, but I guess I shouldn’t be so disappointed,” she sighs now, her folded hands curled around her knee in a coquettish pose, “I am, however, surprised that he is doing this without you. Don’t tell me you had some sort of fallout. The two of you are my favourite romance of the century.”

Despite all her joking, there is some serious undertone in her voice. For a lesbian her gaydar is just a crappy as Harry’s.

“I see you’re not quite following me, are you?” John says shakily, places his cup on top of the one from the day before still left on the coffee table, and tightly knits his fingers together to keep them both from strangling her and from shaking too much, “Sherlock is _dead.”_

For about four seconds Irene doesn’t move at all, eyes unblinking, body still gracefully relaxed, the corners of her mouth not even twitching.

“Bullocks,” she says and it’s slightly bizarre to hear it emerging from between her pretty, thin lips.

John huffs a laugh, “Go to the graveyard, look at his tombstone. Fancy little thing. Quite expensive, I reckon, but Mycroft paid for it, so who cares.”

That comment finally makes her lift an elegant eyebrow.

“Doctor Watson,” she says chidingly, “You of all people should know that just because there is a sign on a door it doesn’t necessarily mean that behind that door you find whatever the sign made you expect.”

John nods, “Interesting metaphor, but I don’t get it.”

Irene actually rolls her eyes in exasperation, “Just because his name is on the gravestone you can’t be sure that he is in the grave.”

“Right,” John says and pulls himself up from the couch, “You already found your way in without my help, so I guess I don’t have to show you out.”

“Think about it, John,” she calls after him, “I don’t know what happened here but I know what is happening elsewhere.”

John stills, back turned to her, his jaw grinding in suppressed anger.

“Don’t get my hopes up,” he whispers, “Please don’t.”

And here it is, the Woman making him beg for mercy. Twice. Sherlock would laugh and call him an idiot. And John would have the chance to return a smile.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him in a way that – if she were anyone else – he’d actually believe her, “I thought you were in on it. You were the only one…”

She trails off and there is some more shuffling. Funny, how she once was completely at ease floundering around naked just to impress Sherlock and now she can barely string two sentences together.

“I’m no one,” John swallows, “And I’m not in on anything. I’d really prefer it if you’d leave now.”

“I guess I should,” she admits, “He’d want me to. Probably didn’t expect I’d be stupid enough to show up here again. He _would_ call it stupid, wouldn’t he? I’d call it… I’d call it _sentimental_.”

She says it like it’s some wondrous thing of yore, some hearsay that one has to worship because it’s so old and rare and precious.

“Stupid and sentimental were one and the same to him,” John points out and she only laughs again­.

“I guess that’s true,” she amends, “Then again, you know him better than I do.”

John would certainly like to think so. They’re talking about his best friend here. Irene has only spent a couple of hours in Sherlock’s presence at best.

“But there is one thing that I know,” she adds teasingly, “One that you obviously don’t.”

“Shut up,” he bites out, “Please, just… shut up.”

“I assume Mycroft knows, too,” Irene simpers, “He probably didn’t in the beginning but he should by now. Not even Sherlock can cleanse the world on his own. But Big Brother is watching him. What the younger one lacks in resources he makes up for with motivation. And the older one provides the money. One hand washes the other. I guess the government is quite interested in usurping Moriarty’s realm for various reasons. Sherlock only needs one, it seems.”

“Just stop talking,” by now John is pacing up and down in front of her, “Stop talking or tell me everything. You’re saying- you’re saying that Sherlock is not actually dead?”

“Well, I can’t know for sure,” Irene tilts her head forward as if asking for leniency – which is rich coming from a dominatrix, “It’s been months since he contacted me. And even then it was coded instead of signed, but he’s the only one who I imagine would have been able to track me down in such a way. It’s been months. But it’s not been a year.”

John feels empty. Like someone hollowed him out with a sharp knife and there is all this space inside of him and he’s got nothing to fill it with, only Irene’s implications echoing through him like a whispered promise.

“Why- why is he doing this?” he stammers, unsteadily reaching behind himself to find the wall and lean against it, “Why would he-“

“You’re a smart man, John,” Irene gives him a reproving look, “I’m sure you can figure it out for yourself. I’m afraid I’ve already said enough as it is.”

She glances at the silver watch that is fastened to her wrist with a fragile bracelet, “I don’t want to be rude, but I’d only planned to pop in for a visit. Chat with you boys, drink a cup of tea, you know. I should best get going.”

The sarcasm in her words is thinly veiled and yet she doesn’t sound hostile. She doesn’t have a reason to be.

She takes her bag and stands up like a praying-mantis unfolding itself, slipping her arms into her coat and tying the sash around her waist. She’s not dressed for the weather, especially if she’s just returned from a country with a considerably warmer climate, but then again she’s probably not planning to be wandering London’s streets today.

Instead she stalks over to the window and glances down, a faint smirk playing around her lips as she finds what she expected to see.

“Shall I give your regards to Mister Mycroft Holmes, Doctor Watson?” she asks politely, her gaze still not directed at him, “That man has the charm of a grease box, but he is certainly vigilant and astonishingly tenacious.”

“Give him a kick in the arse, will you?” John rubs his eyes, feeling completely overwhelmed. If this is all true, if Mycroft is in on this, if Sherlock is seriously-

He remembers standing in front of a posh, polished tombstone, plain but classy, and asking for a miracle. He reckons that this is it. One person returning from the dead to tell him that another will be returning as well.

Heh. The Return of Sherlock Holmes. That’d finally give the papers something truly worthwhile to write about.

Suddenly Irene is standing in front of him, a vaguely expectant expression on her face. She doesn’t smell of the heady, sensual perfume that filled his nostrils when she first stood in front of him, pale and naked and unashamed. Instead there is the faint scent of hairspray and deodorant, feminine but unobtrusive.

“I really enjoyed your blog,” she says, leaning in a bit too close for comfort, “I hope you’ll update it one day.”

Then she bridges the last few inches and presses a dry kiss to his cheek.

“Best of luck, Doctor Watson,” she breathes against the stubbly skin and it takes him a moment to give a tight nod.

Only then does she pull back, turn around and march over to the door and down the stairs, vanishing from his life as silently as she had reappeared. The chime of her presence, though, still resounds within the room, just like Sherlock’s still does, the vibrations of a single drumbeat lingering in the dusty air.

John doesn’t know how long he remains leaning there against the wall, but after a while the pale, cold light of the winter sun grows fainter and the room grows darker and finally he walks over to his desk and turns on the lamp, casting vast shadows all around him.

Hesitating for a moment he contemplates the blank screen of his laptop before firmly pressing his thumb to the on-switch. After a few moments the computer flashes to life with a soft hiss.

A couple of clicks later he’s searched through his bookmarks and opened the once so familiar site. Only then does he pull out the chair and sit down, a soft grunt escaping from his lips.

In the beginning, when it was still so bad that he didn’t quite know what to do with himself, he had spent hour upon hour sitting here like that, wishing for some revelation to dawn to him. But nothing ever happened.

He had wanted to write THE END in huge, bold letters, one single entry, two final words filling the entire screen and bringing this story to an end. But he couldn’t. He’d always got stuck after the T, one blasted letter, accusingly staring back at him, asking ‘You’re giving up already? Loyal friend, are you? Through thick and thin. Coward. Traitor.’

Now he’s doing it again. He’s sitting in front of his blog, types a single capital T, black and bold and intimidating. His fingers linger on the keypad.

He still gets a few hits every day, there are still people out there who expect him to write or who – like him – occasionally forget that Sherlock Holmes fell.

John Watson smiles, finally coming to terms with the seed of doubt that has long since been planet in his heart.

Quickly he types down the words, the words that will change everything, the words that mean the world, and with a quick exhale he hits sent.

Contently he leans back in his chair and looks at his blog that has been updated after almost a year, the letters smooth and elegant and promising a future.

 

_The Blog of Doctor John Watson_

_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_

**_TO BE CONTINUED_ **

**Author's Note:**

> When I did some more research for a different story, I realized that Sherlock actually fell sometime in June (according to John's Blog), so saying that this is a year after, but in winter is wrong, but I didn't feel like correcting that mistake. When I see Sherlock traipsing around in his coat and scarf I always think it's Christmas and that must've gotten me confused. I sincerly apologize.


End file.
